Mal d'archive: On the Growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-Project

Osborne, Dora

doi:10.3366/para.2014.0135

Mal d'archive: On the Growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-Project

Osborne, Dora

Authors

Dora Osborne

Abstract

In Archive Fever, Derrida opens a critical perspective on the status of the trace as that which remains with his reading of Gradiva, the Pompeian fantasy woman who is supposed to have left her singular toe-print in the ash of Vesuvius. This article returns to the figure of Gradiva as emblem for the non-coincidence of origin and trace, in order to outline the (increasingly troubling) archival aspects of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-project, a large-scale, decentralized memorial commemorating those deported under National Socialism. Returning to the site of a missed encounter, Demnig attempts to reinscribe the trace of those who vanished there. But as his project grows, it also shows signs of archive fever, betraying a desire to take possession of the trace of the other, and revealing how, as Derrida describes, the archive does not exist without the political control of memory.

Citation

Osborne, D. (2014). Mal d'archive: On the Growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-Project. Paragraph, 37(3), 372-386. https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2014.0135

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Nov 1, 2014
Deposit Date	Oct 5, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Jun 6, 2016
Journal	Paragraph
Print ISSN	0264-8334
Electronic ISSN	1750-0176
Publisher	Edinburgh University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	37
Issue	3
Pages	372-386
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2014.0135